Man attempts to fast for 55 days to draw attention to Armenian Genocide

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Agasi Vartanyan sits on his cot as he starts a 55-day fast in a glass enclosure at St. Leon Armenian Cathedral in Burbank, Friday, April 3, 2015, to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. (Photo by Michael Owen Baker/L.A. Daily News)

After a few last words and a blessing by a priest, Agasi Vartanyan stepped into a glass enclosure outside a Burbank church Friday morning, where he aims to survive for nearly two months on nothing but water and willpower.

It’s no David Blaine-like stunt or magical illusion. Instead, Vartanyan’s 55-day public fast is about casting global attention on what he calls an injustice to the 1.5 million Armenians who were killed by the Ottoman Turks starting a century ago.

“I will not eat for those who were tortured, raped, abused, sent on death marches, dehumanized and killed,” said the Glendale man in a statement through a translator. “I will not eat to bring awareness to a genocide that modern-day Turkey still refuses to recognize as well as for the genocides still taking place today.”

Armenians mark April 24, 1915, as the date their nation’s intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and later executed by Turkish soldiers as part of a movement to “Turkify” the region. The killings led to what Armenians call a systematic cleansing of their collective existence from the region, where Assyrians and Pontic Greeks were also affected.

But neither Turkey nor the United States has classified the events as a genocide. Locally, Rep. Adam Schiff has taken up the cause, hoping to push the Obama administration and the Turkish government to officially acknowledge the genocide.

The lack of recognition and accountability are why ethnic cleansings continue, said CAHNA’s president Harut Sassounian, who lost relatives to the genocide.

“Our purpose is to raise awareness of genocides so that they never happen again. As you can see, they are still happening in Iraq and Syria,” he said, referring to mass killings and rapes of ethnic minorities by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Built on a high platform outside St. Leon Armenian Cathedral in Burbank, the nearly 12-by-12-foot glass enclosure allows the public to see Vartanyan day and night. He’s been given 55 gallons of water, a few clothes, a lounge chair and a television. There’s also a live stream at cahna.org.

Vartanyan said he chose 55 days because he is 55 years old and he wants to break his own record. Several years ago, he survived without food and only water 50 days.

“I thought about this for many years,” he said. “I’m positively inclined to carry this out.”